Love thy neighbors,

Neighborhood is a dynamic community with, to say it charitably, unique personalities.

We must all live together with a group of unrelated people. Neighbors can be great friends or simply people who get along each, going our own way. But disputes happen.

The good news is that a survey shows that most neighborly disputes get settled in a civilized way by just talking – running a little counter to the notion that we are an overly litigious society.

According to a survey by FindLaw.com, a legal information website, 42 percent of Americans have had a neighborly dispute in the past. Fortuitously, that means 58 percent lived happily together.

The survey found the most common neighborly complaint was noise with 48 percent. Pets and other animals were involved in 29 percent of the disputes.

Initially, I found this somewhat surprising. But then I remembered that my cat, Pierre, often has these terribly sounding standoffs with a neighbor's cat, Seymour. My neighbor and I agreed on mutual interference to chase the other cat away. Those cats are just not ready for mediation.

When neighborly conflicts did arise, the survey found that 49 percent of the disputes resulted in standard diplomacy (talking); 27 percent took more serious action and called the police; 15 percent called the neighborhood association; and 11 percent wrote a letter or email note.

Surprisingly, few neighbors decided to keep the lawyers busy: Just 4 percent went to court and 4 percent went to mediation. Four percent took a mysterious “other action” – one wonders what that is.

The vast majority of neighbor disputes (82 percent) got eventually resolved, mostly by either diplomacy (40 percent), or because the matter just disappeared (35 percent). The police, court, association etc. helped solve the dispute in 11 percent of the cases, while in 14 percent of the cases the matter is still unresolved.

The FindLaw survey gives an interesting peak into American neighborly moral codes. It essentially says that most of our neighbors are good and reasonable people – even when conflicts arise.